Work Text:
Of all the ways Robin has imagined marriage to be--even the very few happy but lame ways that Lily and Marshall and Ted seem to love so much--the reality of it was very, very different.
“A-5,” says Barney. “I saw that thing you did on the news today." He rubs at the back of his head, his hair sticking up, and she thinks about how much she loves the way he looks at home, slightly rumpled and unbuttoned and so much more human. And all hers.
“Miss.” She smirks. “B-3.”
“Hit,” Barney sighs. The man still thought he could get away with bending the aircraft carriers, as if he could somehow get away with her trick. He unbuttons the rest of his shirt and throws it at her, petulantly. Robin dodges easily, smiling around her glass of scotch, and appreciates the view.
“What thing? The part where I did the news?”
“H-9. No, the thing, where you were talking to the foreign correspondent. They’ve had you doing that a lot.” He glances at her over the top of his Battleship board.
“Miss,” she says, instead of replying. Her voice gets very high at the end. Damn.
“Scherbatsky...” he says, all glinty-eyed amusement and seriously, it’s a crime that he can make her last name sound so sexy, and she’ll never tell him this but maybe that was a part of the reason she kept her name
Well, that, and the fact that she’s on network TV. Come on. She’s a feminist.
“Fine, fine,” she says, fumbling behind herself for the catch of her bra, but then he says “Wait," and scoots over to her side of the bed.
“Hey!” she says, slamming down her board, but he’s behind her, face buried into her neck, kissing and nipping.
“Have a little faith, Scherbatsky,” he whispers right into her ear and she realizes that she probably didn’t even have to tell him at all. He takes a deep breath, snuffling into her hair, behind her ear where she’d dabbed a little perfume that morning. She fights a shiver, which is--it’s ridiculous, that’s what it is, they’ve been married for five months, and they first had sex more than five years ago and she should be used to him by now, his presence, the sheer masculinity of him, the way he’s currently sucking on her ear and his hands are kneading her shoulders. She’s on the verge of dragging him down onto the bed, Battleship be damned, when he pulls away.
He sticks his tongue out, and there’s her earring.
“Ew,” she says mildly. He raises an eyebrow.
“Want me to do the other one? I mean, I took off both socks.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Barney presses a kiss between her shoulderblades, and takes his time with her earlobe, all tongue and teeth, and this time she’s really about to pull him onto the bed and have her way with him when he pulls back. Before she can thoroughly distract him (and she can, too, drive out every little thought in his head with a fingernail scratching down his neck, like she found out that day when he was trying to order Chinese. Mrs. Wong never quite looked at them the same way again) he’s dropped the earrings into her palm and slides out of her reach onto his side of the Battleship board.
“Your move,” he says, and there’s something in his easy, happy grin that makes her heart pump. It’s not urgency, but the lack of it, that this isn't a beginning or an end, that she'll never ever have to look at him and tell him it never happened, that she'll never have to watch his heart break a little, ever again.
“Um,” she says, trying to collect her scattered thoughts. She shifts a little on the bed, and watches Barney follow her movements, eyes dark. He adjusts his pants a little. Robin fights a grin, looks him right in the eye as she shifts to cross her legs, her silk stockings making a faint hiss against each other. He gulps.
“Wanna call it a draw? I can think of some better things to do right now...” It's tempting, it really is, she thinks as she looks at her shirtless, eternally hopeful husband (will that ever stop being weird? She doesn't think so, and she doesn't really mind) but if there is anything Robin Scherbatsky likes more than sex, even more than sex with Barney, it is winning. Therefore, post-winning sex with Barney overshadows anything else, probably, even if it means currently not having sex with Barney.
One eyebrow goes up. “Afraid of losing?”
That makes him sit up. “Like hell.”
“Fine, E-5.” she says.
“Miss. So, foreign correspondence?”
“Uh, not actually a valid Battleship move.” Barney gives her a look. “They've been assigning it to me a lot,” she admits. “Not just the on-air interviews. Conference calls with correspondents in Europe, information gathering. Frank—the guy who does a lot of BBC stuff—he's put in a request for transfer stateside. Apparently he wants to spend time with his grandkids and remaining limbs.” Barney keeps looking at her, but it's something she can't bring herself to ask.
“F-11,” he says, finally, and she thinks that maybe he's dropped it, and that she can avoid a little longer. And before, she would've been relieved, glad of something less emotionally charged, but now...
Now, Robin's not sure she wants to be someone who avoids things anymore.
“So,” she says “If I were to be...”
She's not sure how to end her sentence. She refuses to ever give up a career for someone again, but she isn't so selfish as to make Barney wait for her. She knows how he is with delayed gratification and how long distance never works and--
“GNB has offices in most European countries,” says Barney, breaking into her thoughts. “Pretty cushy ones too, even if Europeans have this weird preoccupation with having everything tiny. Plus, less midnight conference calls. It'll be nice being in the same continent with the Russians.”
He says it lightly, but he's looking at her intently in the way he does when he's saying something he doesn't know how she'll respond to. She looks up, relief crashing over her like a wave. He notices, of course.
“What...you didn't think..? Oh, come here.”
He smells like the sandalwood soap his laundry service uses and scotch and himself when she wraps her arms around him. He puts his Battleship lid down.
“I wasn't going to make you a kept man, you know.”
“Kept man? You wound me. Nobody keeps Barney Stinson. Anyways, if anything, you're freeing me up. New York is getting kind of boring, anyhow what with Lily and Marshall getting all parent-y—fifty bucks that Lil's pregnant again, by the way—and Ted and Cecilia moving towards married-and-boringdom with all deliberate speed, there is a serious shortage of awesome people in New York. Europe is where it's at. But I need a fellow American with me so we can make fun of Europeans and feel superior to them and also, before you, I'd have to figure out how to pick up European bimbos and lemme tell you—that is a whole different league than New York—but you're like, hotter than twenty bimbos put together. This marriage thing is a lot cooler than advertised.”
Robin attempts to parse that speech. “I'm Canadian,” she says, finally.
She feels his shoulder rise against her cheek when he shrugs. “Meh. Close enough.”
“I mean, it's not going to be like, right away or anything.”
“Right, I mean, as Ted's best man, I still have to be around for Ted and Cecilia's wedding.”
“Co-best man. Is he actually going to propose to her?”
“Tonight, on the roof GNB building. Dammit, I wasn't supposed to tell you. You seduced it out of me, you scheming wench!”
“Yes! Lily owes me like fifty bucks!” And then, “The GNB roof?”
“Yep,” grumbles Barney. “Stole my play.”
“It's a pretty great play,” says Robin. She smiles.
“Yeah,” says Barney, and he's looking down at her and smiling in that dorky smitten way that she kind of hopes sticks around forever, and there's a thought that would've sent her packing a year ago but now she just warps her arms around him a little tighter.
“I love you, she says, because she does that now, and every time, it feels like coming home. She can feel Barney's smile against her neck.
“Come on,” he says. “Let's show Europe how it's done.”
The Battleship game goes unfinished.